[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

     It's boring.   Every week, I sit down and shop for groceries online.  It's boring.   What happened to all this amazing modern kitchen technology like fridges that were supposed to know when the Orange juice has been used up and automtically order more to be delivered?
    What alternatives exist?   Can I plant a yoghurt tree in the garden and just squeeze the yoghurt out of it in the morning?  There's got to be some better way to get food rather than waste time in the shops or online.

Best Wishes.

[alancalverd]

Better than a yoghurt tree, you could get a cow. Then you could produce your own butter, cheese, cream, yoghurt and a thousand other products including Perspex and glue (build your own airplane!) and never have to mow the lawn again. But a few hundred years ago folk worked out that it was more efficient if one bloke owned lots of cows and sold all those products through shops to people who did other things with their time.

Problem with the self-reordering fridge is that it isn't psychic, so it keeps reordering exactly the same thing as last week unless you reprogram it, in which case you might as well order online anyway rather than die of dietary boredom. And you have to tell it if you are going on holiday (cancel the milk) or are expecting guests, and you still have to load the fridge and pay for the goods (unless you want Tesco to have unlimited access to your bank account).

Not that I would discourage anyone from planting trees. I've had a good crop of apples and grapes this year, and the lettuces, tomatoes and spinach that escaped the attention of voracious chickens were delicious accompaniments to the eggs from said birds, who are a lot more entertaining than a refrigerator. Carrot and parsnips to harvest in the next few weeks.     

[Bored chemist]

Better than a yoghurt tree, you could get a cow. Then you could produce your own butter, cheese, cream, yoghurt and a thousand other products including Perspex and glue (build your own airplane!)

How the heck do you propose to get Perspex^(tm) from a cow?

I recognise that if you took a cow carcase + heated it from a few million years you would get something like crude oil and you could start from there.
It would be a lot easier to start  from grain.
Grain
beer
vinegar
add chalk
calcium acetate  heated to decomposition gives acetone.

Acetone provides most of the carbon atoms in Perspex.
You can he the methyl groups by plant pyrolysis too- they used to call methanol "wood alcohol" for that reason. (you get some more acetone as a by-product).

The cyanide (which you also need for Perspex manufacture) is available from plants too- if you pick the right ones.

[alancalverd]

Many early thermoplastics were made from caesin. "Aerolite" glue is (at least was) caesin + formaldehyde, excellent for assembling troop-carrying gliders, and caesin was used as the original substrate for Perspex, if I recall my elementary textbooks from 60 years ago.

It would indeed be better to start from grain, fruit or potatoes, all of which provide excellent and potable intermediates, but farmers tend to specialise and by my analysis the cow probably yields the widest range of useable products after the sheep, which makes both wool and leather.

[Bored chemist]

caesin was used as the original substrate for Perspex, if I recall my elementary textbooks from 60 years ago.

You don't. Casein based resins are opaque.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galalith
However it was an excellent glue- as long as it didn't get wet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casein#Glue

[alancalverd]

Just found the source book I remembered, which has been on my shelf since 1955, and you're right, sort of. It doesn't mention casein at all! Where on earth did I get the idea? I certainly spent some time in my youth making casein and later using Aerolite glue (which turns out to be urea formaldehyde, not casein based, which would have been completely unsuitable for boat building), convinced all the time that it had also been used for windscreens, so I must have been inspired by something I read somewhere....

[Colin2B]

Just found the source book I remembered, which has been on my shelf since 1955, and you're right, sort of. It doesn't mention casein at all! Where on earth did I get the idea?

Maybe because you can make a plastic from milk casein, but not a clear one. I remember from early science lesson and I’ve seen it in older chem books.

[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

Thanks for various replies.

[marklivin]

Yes, farming and housekeeping is great alternative to shopping. As for the cultivation of organic products, the future for individual farming seems to me.

[Bored chemist]

Perspex is not, and never was, based on casein or anything like it. It was ICI's trademark for  poly(methyl methacrylate).

It was possible to make (opaque) items like buttons from casein based polymers.
It was also possible to make a glue from the same protein  (with different additives; largely lime, I think).

Only one of those has survived the test of time.

[olegmayami]

I'm a real shopaholic and really didn't know what to replace this hobby with. I found out a few ways. Thanks